The barrier is thinning. How many people has he killed to beat it back since we parted ways?
Does he even really need to do that to harness wild magic?
Does he realize how much we’ve all been lied to?
Distantly, I hear Otto shouting for me. I feel his hands on my arms, prying at me, but I’m staring at my brother, part of my brain still mired in memory and dreams.
Dieter beams, that smile I used to think was all confidence. Now, I see the holes in his facade, the madness he hides behind a veil of certainty.
“I will stop you,” I tell him, pushing the words against the sourness of my shaking disgust and horror. “I don’t want to save you. Not after everything you’ve done.”
His smile widens. He’s all teeth and twistedness, all horror and poise.
“You can’t be here,” I say, my voice rising. His silence is unnerving. “You can’t get past the Well’s barrier. Can you? Not entirely.”
I don’t know how to get out of this spell he’s pulled me into. I’m frozen there watching him, this echo of him, that cruel smile, those callous eyes.
Dieter’s smile bends, showing some of that cruelty unrestrained.“Oh, Fritzichen. You misunderstand. I don’t need to get in yet—I just need to get youout.”
My fear starts to crack, panic slithering up through me, and I try to buck backward, to Otto. I strain, pulling, but this spell has me, whatever he’s done. I stepped into it somehow, a snare, a rope tightening around my body and shackling me to him.
“Just like Kleines Mädchen,” he coos. “I only need to lure you to me.”
He snaps his hand shut.
I hear the crunch of the skull. The whimper of the cat.
I hear Otto screaming for me, frantic, one final claw of his fingers on my arm.
And then the whole world shatters into darkness.
40
OTTO
One minute, I’m holding her.
The next, she’s gone.
I stare down at my hands, now empty, my mind stuttering over the concept of how a person can simply disappear.
“Fritzi,” I whisper, my entire being bereft at the loss of her. I look up, the pool now eerily quiet and empty.
“Help!” I scream, panic raising my voice to a fever pitch. “Help!”
The bath was private, but in moments, guards come rushing in, led by Brigitta. They have weapons already in hand—some with blades, some with vials of potions or spells weaving through their fingers. Brigitta stops short when she sees me alone.
“Fritzi was here,” I say urgently.
A look of confusion flashes across the guard’s face.
“Fritzi washere,” I repeat, “and then shedisappeared.”
Gasps filter through the crowd of guards, but Brigitta holds her hand up, demanding silence. “What do you mean?”
“She said Dieter’s name, as if she saw him, but there was no one else around. And then she stood up, and I reached for her, and…” My hands open and close in the empty air. “She wasgone.”
“Breach!” one of the guards shouts. I hear footsteps on the wooden walkway beyond the door, more yelling. “The wall has been breached!”
